Allegiant expands its Pinellas airport routes
By JOSH BOATWRIGHT
Tampa Tribune
Published: Nov 12, 2014

ST. PETERSBURG - Officials at St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport expect 2015 to be the airport's busiest year ever after an announcement Wednesday of five new nonstop flights with budget carrier Allegiant Airlines.

Direct service to Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Richmond and Hagerstown, Maryland, begins in February, and an additional flight to Omaha starts up in March. Introductory fares on the new Allegiant flights range from $55 one-way from Richmond up to $85 one-way from Omaha.

With those added routes, Allegiant will serve 40 cities from the Pinellas County airport, rivaling the number of nonstop flights Southwest Airlines runs out of Tampa International Airport, airport Director Noah Lagos said.

The Las Vegas-based carrier announced nine other new routes across the country Wednesday, mostly to Florida destinations, linking both major cities and secondary markets to tourist spots such as Orlando, Fort Lauderdale and Punta Gorda.

Allegiant is starting service to three new routes this month between the St. Pete-Clearwater airport and cities in Illinois and North Carolina.

The carrier started at the airport in 2006 with 12 cities and expanded its presence rapidly, adding six more in 2013 alone.

Total passenger numbers at the airport were up 23 percent year-to-date as of October, a spike mostly driven by Allegiant flights.

The more than 1.2 million people who flew in and out of the area so far this year has surpassed the total for all of 2013, with the busy holiday weeks still ahead, Lagos said.

"From an airport perspective, with these cities added and the growth we're enjoying from Allegiant, in calendar year 2015 I predict we'll serve more passengers than any year in the history of this airport,” he said.

For Allegiant, the Tampa Bay area market has proven extraordinarily popular in each new city the company has added in the past eight years.

St. Pete-Clearwater is second only to the Orlando-Sanford airport in total routes across the state of Florida, company officials say.

"The Tampa-St. Pete market has proved to be a really strong market for us and it's really a prime fit for our business model, which of course revolves around bringing travelers from these smaller cities to popular vacation destinations,” Allegiant spokesman Justin Ralenkotter said.

Allegiant markets itself as more than a low-cost airline, selling visitors in new cities on the destinations it serves with packages that include hotels, rental cars and attraction tickets.

The company's rapid growth has coincided with a boom in Pinellas County's tourism industry, which generated a record $35 million in hotel bed taxes during the 2014 fiscal year that ended in September.

"We continue to be a growing tourist destination. You can certainly see that in the numbers of hotel nights and volume of business that our hotels in Pinellas County are churning out,” Lagos said.

Hillsborough County also has seen record tourism numbers, and the much larger Tampa International Airport has added several new overseas flights in recent years with plans to announce a new international carrier today.

jboatwright@tampatrib.com
(727) 215-1277